~ Thinking outside the box about Cambodia

Monthly Archives: May 2016

Could you move around in the streets of the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk when those guys in battle dress, dark glasses and the siren of their SUVs blasting as if the town was on full alert as if to announce the 2nd arrival of the KRs similar to the one on 12 April 1975? BTW, are they allowed to wear those dark shades on a Monday and aren’t they afraid of being arrested by their own peers?

Were the operations on 26 May 2016 to arrest the likes of Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger or La Bande à Bonnot?

Kacvey, you may be right to argue that 26 May 2016 cannot be compared to 12 April 1975, but one fact remains as solid and unchanged as the stones of Bayon or Angkor Wat that those who, all dressed in black, entered the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk on that day still remain there as autocrats who practice the same rules of games used by the 2 guys still standing trial at the ECCC. You may also wonder what did Putin whistle to the ears of those ASEAN autocrats while so recently in Sochi.

The conventional press and the social media, both Khmer and international, have abundantly reported with photos of police agents armed to teeth and swinging their machine guns like in a badly made cops movie. The KRs brandished their AK-47, the agents of the ex-KRS machine guns or assault rifles: then and now, just to oppress or kill other Khmer who are not cut from the same moral and virtue tissues as them; they pride themselves of being the stronger among Khmer; they dignified themselves in the culture of wild violence; they advocated the application of laws that have never been tested outside the realm of the kangaroo courts that they set up to reinforce the sate of autocracy.

how Cambodia leaders beset by fears of insecurity and anxiety have so far made such a big deal out of a petty affair of household infidelity into a repression of freedom and civil liberty for the entire nation, and the incarceration of innocent people whose crime was to try to find the truth and to speak out against this entire mess and insanity?

why no investigation has ever been initiated to find out how the infidelity conversation was eavesdropped and broadcast on social media? and why the ex-KRs agents take what was in the social media as the only and sole incriminating evidence? do they have the knowledge and capabilities to find the truth by themselves? or don’t they want it?

The answers given by honest Khmer are simple: They have outsmart themselves in dirty political tricks; they cannot back out; they have to go further, blinder and blinder; the only option available to them is to do so is with a demonstration of extreme force, a promotion of all kinds of threat and a show of potential violence.

“How could I do that? Why I’d not yet even come to be,” Said the Lamb. “At my dam’s teat I still nurse.” “If not you, then your brother. All the worse.” “I don’t have one.” “Then it’s someone else in your clan, For to me you’re all of you a curse: You, your dogs, your shepherds to a man. So I’ve been told; I have to pay you all back.” With that, deep into the wood, The Wolf dragged and ate his midday snack. So trial and judgment stood.

The moral of the the fable is that “The tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny” and “The unjust will not listen to the reasoning of the innocent.”

Kacvey, your point on that doesn’t help solving the current crisis as the wolf “ate his midday snack” is well taken. Well, in Norse mythology, if the wolf was Fenrir, it would meet its fate with Odin’s son, Víðarr.

While concerns of injustice, oppression and corruption have dominated the mind of honest and hard-working Cambodians, let have a short break from that and listen to Socrates’s voice through Diogenes Laertius’s writings.

Here are some of the anecdotes:

Once, Alcibiades offered Socrates, a man of great independence and dignity of character, a large site on which to build a house; but he replied, “Suppose, then, I wanted shoes and you offered me a whole hide to make a pair with, would it not be ridiculous in me to take it?”

Often when he looked at the multitude of wares exposed for sale, he would say to himself, “How many things I can do without!”

He used to say it was strange that, if you asked a man how many sheep he had, he could easily tell you the precise number; whereas he could not name his friends or say how many he had, so slight was the value he set upon them.

He said: There is only one good, that is knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance; wealth and good birth bring their possessor no dignity, but on the contrary evil.

He used to say that to make a good start was no trifling advantage, but a trifle turned the scale; and that he knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance.

Once he was asked in what consisted the virtue of a young man, he said, “In doing nothing to excess.”

Some one asked him whether he should marry or not, and received the reply, “Whichever you do you will repent it.”

He used to express his astonishment that the sculptors of marble statues should take pains to make the block of marble into a perfect likeness of a man, and should take no lest they should turn out mere blocks, not men.

He recommended to the young the constant use of the mirror, to the end that handsome men might acquire a corresponding behaviour, and ugly men conceal their defects by education.

He had invited some rich men and, when his wife, Xanthippe, said she felt ashamed of the dinner, “Never mind,” said he, “for if they are reasonable they will put up with it, and if they are good for nothing, we shall not trouble ourselves about them.”

He would say that the rest of the world lived to eat, while he himself ate to live.

To one who said to him, “You are condemned by the Athenians to die,” he made answer, “So are they, by nature.”

When he was told that So-and-so spoke ill of him, he replied, “True, for he has never learned to speak well.”

To one who said to him, “Don’t you find So-and-so very offensive?” his reply was , “No, for it takes two to make a quarrel.”

He used to say that we ought not to object to be subjects for the Comic poets, for if they satirize our faults they will do us good, and if not they do not touch us.

Well, the last week seems to be full of surprises in the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk while the supremo was in Sochi enjoying caviar banquet and vintage vodka. Things are getting strange, to say the least, and the orchestra seems to be out of tune. Are the musicians playing different music sheets or the conductor starts to lose the control of the performance?

Let pick up the clues from The Cambodia Daily of 17 and 20 May 2016. Thanks TCD for these 2 contemplative pieces: a TCD of 17 May 2016 article reads: “Active Government Can Avert Revolution: Sar Kheng” and another TCD of 20 May 2016 reads: “General Banh Tells Protesters to Get Permission or Go to Jail”

So, from a study point of view, what could your students detect from the statements made by the main 2 pillars from day 1 of the ruling party and the government? And why other stalwarts such as the DPM or the MinInfo are so silent to the point where the public would secretly wonder “where and why have they been hiding?”

The exercise should not be too much into reading the tea leaves as nothing has changed since the premises pertaining to them are well-known throughout: devotion to the party, power and glory, amassing unlimited wealth and fortune, corruption instilled deep into the morrow, hanging on to power at any cost, democratic in words but autocratic in acts, and self-idolization. But somehow, there are detected and unsaid situations that leave few questions open:
– Do the Interior and the Defence reach the top of the ladder? No, because there is a position higher than their current one.
– Is there a competition between the Interior and the Defence for that position, should it become vacant? Probably, desire is a virtue but also a vice.
– Since both of them have their “forces” under them, do the 2 “forces” work in sync? They would all say “Yes”, but what does “Yes” mean in their heart and mind?
– Which of the 2 “forces” views citizens and voters as the people they have to protect and serve? Which of the 2 “forces” views citizens and voters as the people to be oppressed and subjects of tyranny? And which of the 2 “forces” views the party over the country?
– Is “revolution” about the color or about the idea and perspective for the future of the society? Or even a cultural or moral revolution? Nothing is stagnant; nothing is today; nothing is about today; everything changes continuously; everything is about tomorrow.
– Is autocracy a right extolled by those who cannot see that democracy is front and center of the life of free people? Victor Hugo, once said: “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.”

Kacvey, let compare the words/sentences extracted form the hyperlinks, because words are the expression of the mind, have power and can be worth a fair amount of pure gold when it is true. Socrates told humanity that “false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”Defence: Protesters to Get Permission or Go to Jail.

Interior: the color revolution could occur because of inactiveness in our management;
Defence: they want to overthrow the government that is led by the CPP, or overthrow the CPP.

Interior: If our management can allow them to live with happiness together, there is no reason for a color revolution to happen;
Defence: We have one thing to say to anyone who creates obstacles to our work. We will take measures.

Interior: Sometimes, people only speak from one to another, so we do not know what the color revolution is. We do not know what the reason is for a color revolution;
Defence: What is Black Monday?

Interior: If the people criticize the bad management of forests, so we must work hard to protect forests well and find solutions through justice by the law, and we do not need to crack down on people;
Defence: If you want to protest, it is OK. But you have to ask for permission. Ask for permission, and it will either be allowed or not allowed. It is at the discretion of the people in charge of the venue. If you do it illegally, you will be arrested.

Kacvey, please put these words in a matrix and the answers will pop out. After all, 2 men who have all the stars from the galaxy on their epaulets are mere humans with secrets ambitions and distinctions.

Kacvey, it looks like nothing will stop here anymore!! And also, stay alert on the issue of the so-called letter from the royal palace on the investigation of thumbprints. Meanwhile, do study the articles of the Constitution that deal with fabricated statement by government officials and lèse-majesté.

Here we go again! After “ASEAN and the US” in Sunnylands in February 2016, it’s now “ASEAN and Russia”, in Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The competition between superpowers is always on, in time of either peace or war; and they all court small countries to have them as pawns or partners, or whatever you can call them.

Russia, not to be outdone by the US will host on 19-20 May 2016 the meetings in Sochi, a jewel and Putin’s signature location.

Prior to that gathering, a notional chat between Cambodia (fictionalized as Chiso) and a Russian reporter (transposed as Sochi – from an imaginary newspaper “The Truth”) would take place in a luxurious dacha reserved for the occasion. The chat would go as follows:

Sochi: Sir, Welcome to Sochi, the antipodes of Rancho Mirage!
Chiso: Priviet!
Sochi: Sir, do you feel comfortable in Russia and being with Putin? Would you be afraid of being treated like a “Semyon”?
Chiso: Look, I wouldn’t know what’s in their mind, but a “Semyon” of yesteryear is now the “supremo” of Cambodia! Just look at the “red carpet” laid at my feet!
Sochi: Sir, how do you feel from the heat and drought at your Phnom Chiso to the coolness of Sochi?
Chiso: The drought gives me a lot of headache as I do not know how to assure the farmers who depend on the rain to start plowing. No rain, no rice. If no rice, big trouble ahead for me.
Sochi: But you make a lot of publicity about providing only drinking water, but not a word about water for agriculture?
Chiso: I have some plans in my mind: building dams to preserve water, digging more wells or drilling deeper boreholes …
Sochi: That will not solve the present drought problem, nor the next crop of rice.
Chiso: I know that, but as politician I have to make promises to assuage their grief and hardship. Politics is promises; not to keep them is an art and skill politicians must have.
Sochi: Sir, how do you feel here in comparison to Sunnylands?
Chiso: In fact, I like it here better than in Rancho Mirage as I don’t have to worry about the demonstrations by those who dislike me. Russia’s concept of freedom is similar to mine: freedom for the top!
Sochi: Without the demonstrations, you would not know how much you are disliked, your dauphin included, would it?
Chiso: I know how to gauge the “dislike”, that’s why I clamp down on the opposing view when I sense that the level of “like” is seriously dropping.
Sochi: Sir, do you now feel “disliked” or “threatened”?
Chiso: What are you talking about? I’ve been here for 31 years, I gotta to be “liked”. Nobody can threaten me, I have no peers who dare threatening me. In my books of politics, who threatens first scares the rest.
Sochi: That seems to be the current atmosphere in your country.
Chosi: Confirmed! I sense the “disliked” on the speedometer, and I send everywhere the threatening signals immediately: in the bedrooms, the airports, the cafés/bars/reataurants, the casinos, the NGOs, the smart phones, the banks, the press … and it works wonderfully.
Sochi: Sir, you seem to feel insecure.
Chiso: You are injecting idea or notion that is Western. In my country, if I feel insecure, I’ll increase and thicken my perimeter of protection so I would be more and more isolated from real people.
Sochi: Sir, so anything goes when it comes to people who disagree with you.
Chiso: They can disagree with me as much as they like and as long as they live so long they don’t challenge my power, my seat, my authority, my name, my title, my fortune, my wealth, my party, my honor and whatever I do.
Sochi: That’s one-man’s rule, Sir.
Chiso: Finally, you’ve got it right.
Sochi: Sir, why do you consider simple people who just happen to do their jobs as their responsibilities require as a threat to you?
Chiso: In my job, I see no one outside my party as safe from being a conspirator against me, nobody. The simpler they look, the more attention I have to pay. If you ignore conspiracy, conspiracy will not ignore you.
Sochi: Even just wearing black on Monday?
Chiso: Conspiracy is multi-faceted, including color. If I find them, I have them locked up, no matter who they are, even UN employee with diplomatic immunity.
Sochi: Sir, you seem not to care about the constitution and the laws.
Chiso: The constitution and the laws are made by my party, therefore by me. And I see them the way I see them fit with my interests.
Sochi: Sir, it sounds like there is a state of paranoia in your thinking.
Chiso: You call it paranoia, I call it awareness, alertness, prevention, crash it before it’s too late.
Sochi: Speaking about black color and black slack and shirt, you were very familiar with that type of outfit when you were a KR, weren’t you?
Chiso: Then was then, now is different from then.
Sochi: You are not alluding to worm and butterfly, are you?
Chiso: Do butterflies worship or revere worms or caterpillars? Do you know that humans and museums run after butterflies collections?
Sochi: But Sir, man is not butterfly.
Chiso: True, man is not, but man admires the beauty of butterfly … not worm!
Sochi: Sir, do you think your government can carry your party and you to elections victories in 2017 and 2018?
Chiso: What an undocumented question you’re asking! If you even have a hint that my party will not win the next elections, you know nothing about the mechanics that have been put in place at every level of the structure of the country to ensure that the elections will be carried out smoothly, peacefully and democratically for the victory of my party. After 31 years, the tree of my power is like a huge banyan tree with roots spreading everywhere and providing cool shades against the heat from the sun. And as a local myth goes, no Cambodian dares remove and dig out a banyan tree.
Sochi: Unless it is with a chainsaw.

Oh, boy! What an end of the Chaul Chnam 1st month: the drought, the tape and the accusation, the charge against and the detention of human rights workers for complicity in a half a grand so-called bribery! And even phantasmagoric: the so-called and self-appointed upholder of the law worked days and nights and also on a Sunday!

The legal and judiciary chaos and imbroglio are so messy that the constitution and the laws are shut out by big mouths who mixed up everything on the planet in order to shamelessly, subjectively and irrationally justify the autocratic rule.

When honest citizens can be accused and detained on flimsy or trumped charges without proper and independent investigation, and when they see that their natural and institutional rights are repeatedly violated to the core, they lose all hope for a just society that they have been nurturing. There are limited means available to them to counter this abuse because the legal system, the police, the justice process through Prey Sâr are all in the hand of the corruption and autocracy.

But despite their self-defenselessness, they always keep their head up and clear; instead, they feel:
– a sense of panic in the ruling party machinery and machination;
– a sense of fear of loss of control, the control that the ruling party has instilled over the society but has now increasingly crept out of its grip, and
– a sense of loss of perspective and reason like the boat, in the middle of the sea, sailed by the ruling party is facing Poseidon’s ire with strong wind blown from and across all 4 cardinal directions.

Kacvey, whichever way one goes, it is the Cambodian people who has been cheated and pay the price for nothing that they have done wrong. Cheat is a culture of dishonesty that is the source of corruption and other social sicknesses. Cheater must not be given respect and honor, but rather be abandoned to his egoism and self-deprecation. However,

Even if love is a game in which one cheats, why the human rights workers have to pay a heavy price on behalf of the cheater?

Even if a man cheats his own family, why other innocent families have to suffer on his behalf?

Even if a man cheats for the sake of beauty, why does the authority go into his bedroom and implicate other people whose crime was just to do their jobs professionally and according to the normal standard of responsibility?

Even if a man cheats his matrimonial mattress, what that has to do with his public life and who has the moral authority to judge his bedroom character?

Even if a man cheats one beauty for another, since when enjoying the company of a beauty is considered an act of sexual terrorism?

Even if a man cheats for the sake of his macho ego, why not leaving the whole issue to his family?

Even if a man cheats one lover for another, where does it say that lovers are considered financial assets that have to be declared and reported to the authority?

Even if a man cheats for his endless carnal needs, why politicizing his carnality for political benefit, and why not leave him in the hands of his personal physician or therapist?

Even if a man cheats because he has a low moral standard, why not letting him cheat on himself and face his own music?

Even if a man cheats his davenport, who can say that the other man doesn’t?

Even if a man cheats himself, why not letting him bear his own consequences alone?

It all comes down to the issue of “truth” and “honesty.” No matter what people try to hide or to cover up the truth, as time goes by, what is true is revealed and what is fake fades away. Time finds the truth. Every public person must be honest as he has a moral obligation to honor the honest hearts that cast the votes for him. Same as in truth, time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies, as history has no place for them.

Cheating must not be rationalized. When the truth is cheated, sooner or later the Pandora’s box will open for all the evils of the world to fly out.

Scott Alexander, an American author, said: “All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.”